


Es ist süß und rechts für Ihr Vaterland zu töten!

by Worffan101



Series: Two Badasses in Essos: A Four Badasses Spinoff [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ass-Kicking, Heydrich is seriously like more machine than man, I blame AH.com, I finally know where I'm going with this, Savic going Drill Sergeant Nasty on people, Trigger warning: Heydrich is a monster, badassery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:02:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6944572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Worffan101/pseuds/Worffan101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Third part of a series.  Mad Jack and a disgruntled Serbian try to deal with their new army and new responsibilities, as Reinhard Heydrich solidifies his fascist state's grip in Qarth.  Trigger warning, Reinhard Heydrich and associated evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Es ist süß und rechts für Ihr Vaterland zu töten!

**Author's Note:**

> Heydrich’s bullshit is half Donald Trump and half Joseph Goebbels. The in-universe audience's reaction is intentionally modeled on the Two Minutes’ Hate scene from “1984”.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: Aforementioned half-Trump half-Nazi propaganda speech. I do not endorse or support any views or positions espoused by Reinhard Heydrich, he’s a psychopathic monster without redeeming features.

Viserys Targaryen wheezed with effort, pushing himself up with his hands. His teacher rapped the back of his knees sharply with a pole.  
  
“Watch those knees, boy! Keep the legs straight!”  
  
“I will have your head!” the King promised, sweat pouring down his face in rivers. The infernal woman had the _gall_ to laugh! At _him_! Her rightful King!  
  
“That’ll be the day, boy. Put your chest into it, kid, your sister’s already two ahead of you!”  
  
Viserys glared balefully sideways at Daenerys, who was also sweating and gasping for breath, but still somehow moved up and down. _Damned foreign woman…I will execute her, when she ceases to be useful!_ The small, sane part of Viserys’s brain that hadn’t been driven insane by ever-increasing poverty, Targaryen inbreeding, constant terrified flight, and the promise he’d made to care for his sister whispered that no, he wouldn’t do that, the woman would cut him down before he could even finish giving the order. But he ignored the voice, for now. Or tried to.  
  
“YOU LAYABOUTS, DID I SAY YOU COULD STOP?” Milunka Savic howled in Dothraki, which Viserys had been grudgingly picking up. “I SAID FUCKING RUN, YOU TURK PIGS! PUT YOUR FUCKING BACKS INTO IT! FUCKING HORSE-FUCKING IDIOTS!” The Serb turned back to her teenaged charges, swearing in her native tongue. “God-damned horse fuckers, spend all their time riding and don’t know how to run! At least they’re making like the crazy Englishman.” Mad Jack’s brisk morning runs, which he called “just the sort of thing to get a man’s blood moving”, had mystified the Dothraki at first. Then some of them had decided that it was running long distances in the sun that made him so balls-out insane, and figured that if it came with the fighting skills and sheer insane courage that the Englishman regularly displayed, they wanted in. Now several hundred Dothraki panted and wheezed their way behind the crisply-uniformed commando every morning, and the less proud of them had given up and gone to Milunka for help. Which she gladly dispensed, albeit accompanied by regular tirades of insults.  
  
Viserys knew first-hand that the warrior woman had received three separate sexual requests from different warriors who thought to try their luck. The first two had been lucky; she’d just laughed at them. The third had gotten too forceful, and had been laughed at for his broken and hastily re-set nose for the next two weeks.  
  
“THAT’s the form I want to see!” Savic growled, tapping Viserys on the back as he apparently did something right. “Keep it up, boy! This’ll make you strong, then I teach you how to kill a man with your bare hands, and the Englishman teaches you proper sword work.” She spat. “We need more fucking guns, boy your age shouldn’t be stuck with a fucking sword.”  
  
“A sword is the noble weapon of a knight and King!” Viserys wheezed as a couple of Dothraki women who’d stopped by to watch swapped bets on how much better Daenerys would do than he did. Viserys felt a stab of jealousy; he was the King, damn it! They should show him proper respect!  
  
“A sword is a stick of metal that’s only useful because this shitty place doesn’t have guns yet, and because the mad Englishman has more balls than brains,” Milunka corrected him, rapping his back gently but firmly with the pole. “Keep up that good form. Oy, Turk bitches, put me in for a metal cookpot and three spoons that the boy here catches up with his sister.” The pole rapped Viserys again. “You hear that, boy? You’re working for my sake now, put your fucking chest into it!”  
  
Viserys felt a spark of pride that the iron woman would bet on him. Nobody had ever done something like that, he realized. The compliments had always rung false, and had reliably ended when he was no longer useful to his current patron, further feeding his paranoia; Daenerys at least was accorded a great beauty, but the rightful King had never been given anything more than sycophancy.  
  
He redoubled his efforts, trying to keep the ‘good form’ that the iron woman wanted, and earned an approving grunt. “That’s it, boy. Don’t wear yourself out. Girl! He’s catching up! Put those skinny arms into it! Your brother says you two have the blood of dragons, are you going to prove him false? You have one more minute!”  
  
 _Shit_. That was two-thirds of the set done already. He needed to be faster. Viserys focused on breathing right, ignoring Savic as she shouted a series of insults at the exhausted Dothraki warriors as they passed. He was the _King_! The dragon-blooded King, son of Kings! He would ride over everything in his path and cut the Usurper down with his mighty sword!  
  
“Easy, boy,” growled Savic in his ear. “Keep that breathing steady. You’re almost there. You won’t beat your usurper if you wear yourself out early.”  
  
Viserys grunted in acknowledgement and re-focused on his breathing, trying to ignore his burning arms. Savic believed in him. Daenerys believed in him. He was the King, and he would prove himself the greatest of his age!  
  
“TEN SECONDS!” roared the iron woman, uniform buttons blazing in the morning light. “Put your backs into it! Use those chest muscles, come on!”  
  
Viserys managed two push-ups in the last ten seconds, before Savic howled “TIME!” He rolled over, gasping for breath and aching across his arms and chest, as the Dothraki women bickered and complained at each other. He turned his head. His sister lay beside him, red-faced and sweating, but beaming with glee.  
  
“Good job, boy,” Savic said, baring her teeth as she held out a hand to each youth. “You two tied. Maybe next time you’ll win me that pot, eh boy? And girl—good work. He’s older and bigger than you, you did very well just to tie. Come. Let’s get you two cleaned up and get you both some good red meat. It’ll make you strong.”  
  
Brother and sister gladly accepted the proffered hands. Savic hauled them up without so much as a grunt of effort.  
  
“And hey, Turks! You hold those bets for the next time I make them do that! Two days from now, you hear me?”  
  
Viserys grinned in anticipation. Soon these primitive savages would see his true strength and acknowledge him as their dragon King!  
***  
Reinhard Heydrich double-checked his trousers. A little creased, but serviceable. He threw on his longcoat and looked up with a carefully-manufactured smile.  
  
“I thank you again for a wonderful night, _mein Liebchen_ ,” Heydrich said to the merchant. “Might I ask you to come along to see my speech? I will be addressing the Guard and the people today.”  
  
“Unfortunately, I have urgent matters of business that I must attend to,” Daxos replied with an apologetic smile. “But I have no doubt that you will be…stirring.” Heydrich chuckled, with very well-imitated warmth, at the Qartheen man’s innuendo.  
  
“Very well then. Shall we dine again next week? At the same time and day?”  
  
“Of course,” the merchant replied. “Good day, my Captain.”  
  
“ _Guten Tag, mein Herr_.” Heydrich bowed elegantly as he left, closing the mansion’s door politely behind him.  
  
As he walked to the square where a stage had been constructed for his speech, the Butcher of Prague considered his progress. Several people stopped as he passed in the street to salute and say _Heil Heydrich_! to him—excellent. Even easier than last time.  
  
Two blocks from the mansion, he encountered the newest addition he’d made to the city; a street orphan, dressed up in a miniature _Schutzstaffel_ uniform (the prototype for his planned _Heydrichjugend_ ), selling primitive broadsheets from a corner. The printing-press that Heydrich had constructed was an official Guard secret, and the Nazi had begun using it to mass-produce propaganda. He stopped, was recognized with a _Heil Heydrich!_ , and insisted on paying for the broadsheet. It was simple, with rough and imperfect letters, but Heydrich thought that it had come out well—although it was nothing next to a good bit of Goebbels nonsense, that man could spin anything into a rant about the evils of Jews and make the Mad Austrian’s most arrogant babble seem like a brilliant stratagem. A woodcut showing the purported inferiorities of Ibbenese took up half of the page, while the other half was a broad headline about Heydrich’s planned speech, followed by an appropriately flowery description of his “tireless efforts” to “defend our glorious city from the foul degenerates who seek to destroy it”.  
  
The climate of fear was there, Heydrich mused in satisfaction. This was almost disappointingly easy.  
  
He’d have to be on his guard for the inevitable wrinkle.  
  
The psychopath continued on his way, noting with approval three squads of his men making their rounds and looking for ‘potential traitors’. Heydrich felt that that _particular_ authorization had been the hardest to get, but well worth the effort.  
  
Overall, he felt that even without Goebbels, Himmler, and the Mad Austrian, he was progressing well ahead of schedule. Of course, not having that idiot Hess might be to his benefit…but then, it was more likely that these primitive people simply did not understand propaganda or public theater.  
  
“ _Heil Heydrich!_ ” greeted a uniformed guardsman as Heydrich approached the rear of the stage. Heydrich returned the stiff-armed salute with a quiet _Sieg Heil_. “The crowd’s ready, sir. We’ve had Xhagar doing his thing for about half an hour or so, whipping them into a frenzy as you ordered. He really does hate those Ibs, sir.”  
  
“Good,” Heydrich replied, attempting with some success to fit emotion into his curt response. It was a work in progress, really. “Give him…” Heydrich checked his pocket-watch, which had thankfully come through into this world with him. “…two minutes. I don’t want him to get too repetitive. I am presentable?”  
  
“Yessir—oh, wait, you’ve got a bit of a, um, by your collar…”  
  
Heydrich nudged his coat’s collar up a little bit. “Better?”  
  
“Yessir, can’t see it at all now. Good night, sir?”  
  
“Very rewarding,” the Nazi replied. He couldn’t really judge the night as _good_ or _bad_ , being effectively incapable of feeling normal emotions, but he had certainly wound the merchant around his finger more tightly, while making the rook feel as if Heydrich were the one so manipulated.  
  
 _Perhaps the Queen?_ , part of Heydrich wondered. _He is rather perceptive…might be a more powerful piece than I had anticipated…_ Heydrich came to a conclusion in seconds. Yes. The merchant was not one to underestimate.  
  
“Bring Xhagar back now,” Heydrich ordered, double-checking his cap. “I am ready to tell the people of the foul corruption hiding in their midst.”  
  
“Yes, sir. _Heil Heydrich!_ ”  
  
Reinhard Heydrich felt a twist of something resembling anticipation. With any luck, in twenty minutes, the people of Qarth would believe with all their hearts that the so-called warlocks were being to hate, despise, and fear—and they would wonder how they had never accepted this truth before.  
  
The Butcher of Prague felt a degree of self-satisfaction as he ascended the steps. He did so love his job some days.  
  
The podium was prepared, a megaphone set up already. Heydrich heard the crowd swell in a great cheer; there were more than he’d anticipated. Good.  
  
“ _Heil Heydrich!_ ” roared the crowd as the Nazi took his place for the speech, three hundred people saluting the Butcher of Prague with outstretched arms. Heydrich returned the salute.  
  
“ _Sieg Heil,_ citizens.” The crowd quieted in anticipation. “Good news, my brethren. This month the Guard have made great strides in our noble quest to destroy and root out the vile plots of the Ibbenese degenerates. We have eliminated two nests of treasonous sympathizers--" people who had become suspicious of Heydrich “--and prevented a foul and villainous plot of an Ibbenese cell to pollute the wells of our fair city with cowardly poison!” Jeers and howls of hatred towards the Ibbenese, and calls of _Sieg Heil!_ ; exactly what Heydrich needed. “Remember, citizens; be always vigilant, for the perfidy and cunning of the inferior races knows no bounds! They always seek to destroy us with their treacherous ways, and the only safeguards that we have for our inherent racial superiority are our constant vigilance and our willingness to strike hard when it is necessary!” Half the crowd was shouting _Heil Heydrich_ now, and the Butcher of Prague had to shout to make himself heard, even with the megaphone. This was almost too easy, the psychopath thought. True, he’d studied Goebbels’s style and casually paid attention to the Mad Austrian’s form of ranting, but he knew that imitating emotion was one of his weaker points; he was very lucky to get this level of response.  
  
“Remember, to kill an Ibbenese degenerate is not murder, but an act of service to your fellow citizens and to our fair city. Your beloved _Schutzstaffel_ works tirelessly for your safety, but as long as treacherous elements remain within our walls we can never be truly safe. Maintain your guard, citizens! Report any suspicious activity, any sign of treachery or dissent, to the _Schutzstaffel_ as soon as possible.” A page from Himmler’s book, that, from the early days. Heydrich had been disturbed that he hadn’t thought of the idea first, and had rigorously trained himself to avoid further such oversights. In fairness, he’d been busy using the wife and family he’d cultivated to practice emotions, but it was still an oversight. And besides…turning the people against each other was such an _efficient_ method to help gain total power.  
  
Heydrich raised his hands, and the frenzied crowd gradually quieted. “But I have ill news, my brethren. We have received information indicating that the inferior races seek to subvert our society and our glorious order by corrupting our youth with their foul and degenerate ideals.”  
  
The crowd howled with shock. Heydrich upheld his hands, but it still took almost half a minute to calm them down. Damn. These people had never experienced a good Goebbels speech before.  
  
“Yes, these vermin are numerous, subversive, and treacherous, lurking in corners and sewers and plotting the corruption of our children and the demise of our great society! But rejoice, my brethren!” The fake emotion was coming more easily with practice. “For I have a plan to protect our children from the vile plots of the degenerates! Starting tomorrow, your loyal _Schutzstaffel_ will be holding a school, to teach the children of our city our way of life and the methods of constant vigilance! The Guard has insisted, against my protests, that we call this youth group the _Heydrichjugend_ , after me, your _SS-Obergruppenführer_.” Heydrich continued with a carefully-rehearsed modest wave as a few people laughed. “Please, please. I will not deny the wishes of my loyal guards! They have earned the respect our entire people for their tireless and heroic efforts on our behalf. But regardless. Beginning tomorrow, the _Heydrichjugend_ will begin to meet at every guardhouse. All children between the ages of six and twelve are welcome to attend and learn of the strength and fortitude of our mighty and superior culture.”  
  
Heydrich moved into the conclusion. “Remember, my brethren; _you_ are the bulwark against the degenerate tide. _Ours_ is the superior culture! _Ours_ is the master race! The degenerates hate us because they know within their twisted hearts that we are superior! And through our inherent superiority, we will be victorious!” Heydrich saluted the crowd, arm stiff. “ _Sieg Heil!_ ”  
  
“ _Heil Heydrich_!” chanted the crowd. “ _Heil Heydrich! Heil Heydrich!_ ”  
  
The psychopath felt a surge of that off-brand satisfaction that imitated pleasure for him. He barely even needed to proceed with the elimination of the warlocks.  
  
But “barely” was still necessary. He had been requested, via a man named Pyat Pree, to attend the mysterious men in their compound. And Reinhard Heydrich was not one to let an opportunity to analyze a threat go to waste.  
***  
John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill missed his bloody bagpipes.  
  
 _By God, I could do with some ‘Scotland the Brave’ right about now_. The gates of Mereen were rather larger than Mad Jack had expected, and a man could always do with a rousing song.  
  
On the positive side, he had a bloody great army at his back and the Serbian lady at his side. And that lady was a _terror_ of a woman!  
  
“Good day, sirs!” Mad Jack greeted the Mereenese delegation with a broad smile. “I daresay you chaps are wondering why I’ve brought a rather large army to your doorstep, eh?”  
  
The merchants looked at each other. Then one who seemed to have been nominated as a spokesman stepped forwards. “Ah, yes, _Khal_ —what was your name, again?”  
  
“Oh, my dearest apologies,” the Englishman replied. “How dreadfully uncouth of me, to forget introductions! Good sirs, my name is John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, and I serve His Majesty, George VI, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in the Office of Military Intelligence, sixth division. And I am to understand that you worthy fellows are representatives of the merchant companies of this city?”  
  
The merchants retreated for a quick whispered conference. The spokesman returned.  
  
“Er, yes. We are. And, er, we are to understand that you serve—some King?”  
  
“His Majesty, George the--”  
  
“They get it, English,” growled Savic. “Here. Let me handle this.” She grabbed the fat spokesman by the collar of his shirt and hauled him up to her eye. “Listen here, little boy. Give us all of your slaves and ships right fucking now or we kill you and sack the city. Clear?”  
  
The merchant went white. “How dare…you cannot do this! We have money, a bribe, all ready! You can’t just…”  
  
“I can do whatever the fuck I damn well please,” Savic snarled back. “The mad Englishman has an army, and he thinks that stabbing a man to death with a sword is an ‘good rousing scrap’. So unless you want us to set your city on fire, give us your slaves and every ship in the harbor.”  
  
“This…this insult will not be forgotten! How dare you…Every city in Slaver’s Bay will send its armies after you! We will send fifty thousand mercenaries and ten thousand Unsullied to crush your pathetic army of savages! Unhand me, wench! Or we won’t even pay you before we summon the other cities!”  
  
“Perhaps I could better handle this,” Mad Jack suggested tactfully, interposing himself between the burly Serb and her quavering, blustering captive. “Sir, as slavery is a foul offense against His Majesty’s laws, I must insist that you surrender all captives being held in servitude at once, and we will be willing to pay for some vessels with which to transfer King Viserys’s mighty legions to reclaim his rightful throne. If you cannot spare the vessels for a reasonable price, we would be willing to proceed to the city of Qarth and attempt to negotiate with them…”  
  
“Qarth?” The merchant straightened his gilded doublet and snorted. “You fool, Qarth’s ruled by that dead-eyed creep Heydrich now. And all of the people are absurdly loyal to him—they greet each other by saying _Heil Heydrich_ , for the love of the Gods! You go there, you’ll be dead before morning. Or worse.”  
  
Mad Jack went still. “Heydrich? As in _Reinhard_ Heydrich?”  
  
“Yes,” the disgruntled merchant confirmed. “He’s a foreigner from some place called Duchess Rike. They call him ‘over-grouping’-something or other. He has a private warlock who makes these sheets of paper that say whatever he wants on them, massive numbers of identical letters that he spreads around the city. And they’re insanely terrified of Ibbenese now, when before they didn’t care; I saw a man get shot with one of their new hell-weapons in the street for ‘suspected Ibbenese sympathies’, and the people _cheered_.” The merchant shuddered. “And I saw Heydrich, giving a speech. He told them to hate and fear the Ibbenese, and that he would stop at nothing to see the Ibbenese wiped off of Essos. And his eyes…” The merchant was pale white, now. “Those eyes, like dark stars, looking into a black pool of emptiness, no soul, no feeling, just cold—not even cruelty, not even proper ambition, like some kind of artisan’s contraption wearing a man’s face.”  
  
“English?” asked Savic cautiously. “You look pale as a ghost. What’s the matter?”  
  
Mad Jack released the merchant and turned, stride purposeful and rapid. “We go to Qarth! I’ve seen Heydrich’s handiwork before—that man must be stopped by any means necessary.”  
  
“But what about the slaves?” objected Savic. “And the ships?”  
  
“To tarnation with all that, there’s a bloody Nazi Hun with malevolent plots to foil! Come, dear lady! If we are swift, we may yet be able to stop him from doing too much damage!”  
  
“Wait,” growled Savic. “This Nazi, he has an army, I presume? And we need to get their quickly?”  
  
“Yes…” Mad Jack replied slowly. “At least, I presume that he has an army—I’ve seen the briefings, Heydrich is a right bastard. The Butcher of Prague, we called him. The man’s a monster, more machine than man, and crueler than Satan himself with the cunning of Ulysses and the Serpent in one body. By Jove, I thought we’d got the bastard back in ’42…”  
  
“Then how about this.” The Serb turned back to the merchants’ spokesman, who paled. “We take our bribe in slaves and ships.”  
  
“Inconceivable!” blustered the merchant, torn between the unintentional grievous insult of the bribe-ee _presuming_ to specify the size and nature of the bribe, and the desire to get the barbarians out of his hair. “You cannot just _demand_ …”  
  
“Or I could shoot you, and your greatest champion, and all the men you can bring to bear,” Savic offered.  
  
The merchant’s eye gleamed as he grabbed hold of an idea. “Yes! We send a champion, and if he wins, then you leave with nothing—you win, you determine the bribe! Knives, at noon tomorrow!” One of the more intelligent-looking merchants seemed rather concerned about this plan, but Savic was too quick.  
  
“Done! Tomorrow at noon!”  
  
“Done!” snapped the merchants’ representative, fairly cackling with glee. “Oh, this is the best deal I’ve ever made!”  
  
Mad Jack could have told the man how completely wrong he was. But his British pride restrained him; not telling people the details of why doing certain things was a bad idea before they did them was practically the national modus operandi, after all.  
***  
Milunka Savic stripped down to her trousers, undershirt, and breast band. “No weapons but knives, eh?” she chuckled. “I killed a man with a knife up his nose once. Not quite as interesting as the time I went out to piss and ended up in the Bulgarians’ trench by mistake, but a good story. I need to tell you sometime, English.”  
  
Mad Jack folded the Serbian’s uniform top carefully and handed it to Viserys and Daenerys, who carefully put the coat with Milunka’s weapons. “If I may say so, my lady…”  
  
“Don’t you even fucking think about it, English,” Savic growled. “I’ve needed to do this for _years_. Who’s the fucking ‘housekeeping’ _now_ , eh? I’m a fucking Sergeant, you shitbags! Decorated for marksmanship! Fucking ‘housekeeping’? Criticize my work ethic? Kiss my fucking ass! Arrogant rich shits. Present company excepted, of course.” She took the knife from her field kit, six inches of fine Austrian steel, and swished it back and forth a few times to limber up. “You stay back and keep the boy from getting any idiot ideas, English. I will be fine.”  
  
Mad Jack saluted, mustache bristling. “Who am I to deny a lady’s wishes? As you wish, madam! And may I say, kick his foreign arse!”  
  
Savic bared her teeth. “I’ll bury my boot where the sun doesn’t shine, English. Just you wait and see.”  
  
A horn blew, and Mad Jack vacated the field. The muscular Serb took her place, scarred shoulders and powerful biceps rippling as she flexed and stretched in the hot noonday sun.  
  
“I’m ready, boys!” she shouted. A bunch of Dothraki cheered; most shouted sexual slurs or requests for sex, until she shot a death glare at them and they shut up. “Who’s my challenger?”  
  
The man who stepped from among the Mereenese crowd was about seven feet tall and built like an ox on steroids. Savic looked up at his neck—wider even than the man’s head—and scarred face. The man had dozens of bulging, rippling muscles flexing just under the surface, arms as thick as legs and legs like tree trunks, with the white traces of a thousand fights marked on his copper skin.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“You ready to die, little woman?” the brute growled. “I am Goghor. My master is Hizdahr zo Loraq. I will kill you.”  
  
“How many times have people promised to do that to me?” the Serb grumbled. “You got your knife at least?”  
  
The man drew a foot-long serrated blade of steel. “Yes.”  
  
“…shit.”  
  
“She shouldn’t have underestimated them,” Daenerys said quietly to her brother.  
  
“What? What do you mean?”  
  
“She didn’t think they’d actually have a good fighter. Or at least not one good enough to threaten her. Maybe she didn’t think much of them as a people, that was a mistake. Or she was too busy thinking of a way to satisfy the Dothraki to consider. Or she was too sure of herself. She’s a really good fighter, but she’s been the best for so long that she’s gotten too used to it.”  
  
“What do you mean?” the would-be King asked in confusion.  
  
“Like the fight Sir Willem took us to once, when we were small, remember?” Viserys nodded. “The one man who was the champion, was killed by some man they took off the street?”  
  
“Oh. Is she going to die? I forbid—I…I don’t want her to die, I like her.”  
  
“The lady will not die, I assure you, young sir,” Mad Jack said from Viserys’s other side. “Injured, quite likely. But that lumbering brute is not fast enough to catch her, and she can withstand injuries better than most any man I’ve ever met.” He nodded to Daenerys. “Perceptive, young lady.”  
  
The young woman blushed and ducked her head. “I was just watching, Mad Jack, ser.”  
  
“You _paid attention_ , though. That’s something even some SAS men forget to do.” The British man’s mustache bristled again. “Damnation, why aren’t they starting the fight yet?”  
  
“This is OUTRAGEOUS!” yelled a man from among the Mereenese crowd. He was youngish, tall, richly dressed, with hair styled to look like a ram’s horns. “To have a mere slave fight for our entire city! At the very least it should be a man of a high bloodline!”  
  
Goghor and Savic shared a look, a groan, and two pairs of rolled eyes. One of _those_ types.  
  
“Out of my way, lowly slave!” the rich man shouted, striding forwards, sword drawn. “I cannot believe the cowardice of my compatriots! I will cut this foreign slut to pieces myself!” He struck a dramatic pose, flexing his biceps for the audience; several young women _ooh_ ’ed and _aah_ ’ed. “For I am Oznak zo Pahl, and my father commands the city guard, as my father is the richest man in Mereen! Kneel, savage bitch, before I cut you apart!”   
  
Milunka shared another look with Goghor. “Is this a regular thing with this prick?” she asked. The giant pit fighter shrugged.  
  
“Maybe? He probably feeling like he need to compensate for his tiny dick. My master also one of his enemies, I think.”  
  
“Out of my way, uneducated brute,” the young man ordered, striding up to Goghor. The big man looked back to a man in the crowd; probably his ‘master’, Savic thought. The man waved the giant back. The big man shrugged and sighed regretfully, sheathing his knife.  
  
“Maybe next time I kill you, little woman.”  
  
“And maybe next time I gut you, big man.” The giant laughed at Savic’s retort, causing the blustering man to growl angrily.  
  
“Hurry up, slave! I must defend the honor of House Pahl and the Great Masters of Mereen!”  
  
“Boy, you have no fucking idea what you’re dealing with,” Savic warned him. “I once captured 23 men at once, by myself, after I went to the wrong trench after taking a piss. I won my squad 19 bottles of the finest French cognac ever made with my shooting, and we got stinking drunk on that shit and STILL survived the next week. Trust me, boy. Take a step back, let the big man and I go at it, and you go home and marry some nice young woman, give her a few kids, settle down with a family. Because if you really want to take this all the way, I’m going to cut your fucking life short, and then you won’t have any of that.”  
  
Onzak went red with rage. “You…you savage, common little…Sound the horns! I will wet my blade with this whore’s blood.”  
  
Savic bared her teeth. “Insults get you nowhere, boy. Last chance to back down. Here, I’ll even give you a fighting chance if you really insist.” She sheathed her knife, causing a gasp to run through the crowd.  
  
The man snarled in inarticulate fury. “SOUND THE FUCKING HORNS!”  
  
The horns sounded, a little unevenly, and the man charged.  
  
Milunka Savic stepped aside with practiced ease, grabbing the man’s sword arm, stopping his would-be decapitation stroke cold, and snapped his elbow with a jerk and her own body weight. The man screamed in pain. Savic whipped her knife out before he could recover, grabbed the man in a headlock, and expertly drove her blade into his throat.  
  
Onzak zo Pahl collapsed, choking on his own blood. Savic kicked the sword out of his hand, picked it up, and decapitated the young man with one stroke.  
  
There was utter silence as the Serb cleaned her blade on a strip torn from Onzak’s shirt. Then she looked up.  
  
“I want all the slaves and ships his family owns, plus all their gold. One tenth of everything else. Doesn’t have to be exact, just give me enough to make it look like ten percent. Clear?”  
  
Hizdahr zo Loraq began clapping, slowly and sardonically. The eyes of the Mereenese people turned towards him, but then the Dothraki drowned him out by cheering for Savic.  
  
The Serb stalked back to the Dothraki lines and accepted her coat from Mad Jack. “Let’s go get drunk, English. Poor stupid kid had more balls than brains.”  
***  
Reinhard Heydrich drank as small an amount as he felt reasonable from the goblet of dark wine, noting that the initial foul taste swiftly transformed into…a strange boquet of flavor that contained the tastes of seven poisons and eighteen types of juice, tea, coffee, and alcohol. Not to mention the bizarre taste of _ground beef_ in there, along with something that Heydrich didn’t quite recognize. Most peculiar.  
  
Given this unlikely event, Heydrich thought it prudent to play along, at least for now. He followed the instructions he had been given; in the building, to the right, and up the stairs. Unusual; the building was gloomy, yet he could see…odd. A man, well-formed and blond of hair, jerking spasmodically as two dark shapes shot strangely-shaped guns at him repeatedly. That was eerily like how he had been killed.  
  
Ah. Lysergic acid, there was a trace of that in the wine. Altered by whatever caused all of those flavors to suddenly appear, no doubt. There didn’t seem to be enough of it for its hallucinogenic properties to be that immediately obvious. Interesting, Heydrich thought. He proceeded, ignoring the vision.  
  
To the right, up the stairs…and this room held another vision. His brother, Heydrich saw him clearly. His brother, Heinz, in a room, alone, by a fire—Heydrich saw his brother holding some papers. After a moment, he realized that those were his personal journals, and notes from the Wansee conference. Of course, the Party would send his effects to his next of kin.  
  
Heinz wore a dark frown, and as he read, Heydrich saw his brother look repeatedly to the SS insignia on his uniform, with growing disgust. As his brother continued into the Wansee notes, Heydrich noted that the man was growing paler, seeming horrified…  
  
Irrelevant. If his brother was unable or unwilling to commit fully to the quest for power, he was meaningless to the Butcher of Prague. Heydrich continued on.  
  
The next room had old Ernst Rohm, who’d been purged on the Night of the Long Knives. He seemed to be going about his day, not recognizing or even noticing Heydrich. Heydrich proceeded, uninterested; Rohm had been a useful tool, but ultimately nothing more.  
  
The next room shook from the impact of an artillery barrage. Heydrich saw a map on the wall of the room; Berlin seemed to be under siege, the Soviets, British, French, and Americans all pushing into the _Vaterland_ from three fronts. The Mad Austrian, the _Führer_ , seemed a broken shell of himself, staring in mute horror at the table. Speer approached, tried to give him an update. The Austrian looked up, began to smolder with rage as Speer laid out the utter hopelessness of the cause, and finally exploded with rage, screaming about traitors and incompetents. Heydrich curled his lip; he _knew_ that letting the Oriental _untermenschen_ provoke the Americans had been a terrible idea. He left the picture of ruin and proceeded on.  
  
His brother again, this time handing passports to _Juden_. Heydrich shook his head. Idiot. He must know that even if Heydrich himself were still alive, he would never protect his brother if the fool were caught. The scene shifted, and Heinz was holding a gun to his head. The Butcher of Prague shook his head again. Damnable idiot. His brother pulled the trigger. What a waste. He had been such a devoted, efficient Nazi. The full extent of the plan must have been too much for his brain. Heydrich would have to be careful about that sort of thing in the future.  
  
The next room had Heydrich standing tall and proud, throngs worshipping before him. Vision-Heydrich had one foot slightly raised, resting on the face of a worshipful laborer, grinding the man’s face into the dirt as he smiled in ecstasy.  
  
 _This, forever,_ thought Heydrich. _A boot, grinding a human face into the ground. And I will be the boot._ He allowed himself a half-minute of self-indulgence before he moved on.  
  
The next room contained Pyat Pree.  
  
“ _Sieg Heil_ ,” Heydrich greeted out of sheer practiced habit.  
  
“The vision is over, Captain,” the warlocks’ toady said. “Please, follow me this way, into the garden. The Undying Ones wish to speak with you.”  
  
Heydrich noted the strange overlaps in the man’s tones, and presumed that this was another vision. He played along anyway; he was still armed, after all, the pistol in his coat. “Lead the way.”  
  
Ten tall, well-formed men stood in a richly-decorated hall. Heydrich noted the slightly flowing colors and presumed more sorcery. He approached anyway; information on this threat was extremely valuable.  
  
 _We are the ones who brought you here_ , one of the men intoned. Heydrich knew it to be a lie. _You are burdened with glorious purpose. Shall we illuminate it to you?_  
  
“Show me your true forms, and I will consider it,” Heydrich replied, voice devoid of all emotion. The vision flickered and died, revealing another bland, dark antechamber. The psychopath shook his head and continued to the right.  
  
The next room held several shadowy, unbreathing, withered forms, a blue, pulsating heart hanging above them. The creatures looked up, lips stained deepest blue. Heydrich considered them curiously.  
  
“We see you not, and saw you not!” snarled one of the man-things. “You are a mystery to our visions, a force of darkness so deep that you are yourself occluded!” Visions flared up again as the creatures closed in. Heydrich surreptitiously reached into his longcoat pocket as visions flickered; the merchant Xaro, in the throes of passion beneath Heydrich; Hitler, looking at Heydrich with just a touch of fear at Wansee; Himmler approvingly looking over Heydrich’s plans for the Final Solution; and now stranger things, an Englishman with a magnificent moustache carrying a sword standing alongside a burly Serb woman with a rifle, shouting in defiance against some unseen threat; Heydrich wielding a sword atop a horse, shouting orders to unseen legions; a man, small and wiry, with an incredibly intense gaze, fighting a pale man-monster with flesh of ice and a crown of icy horns by the side of a seven-foot burly man with a scarred face; a woman in a Soviet uniform and a smiling little man with a ruined face, climbing into neighboring trees with sniper rifles in a snowy landscape; a titan of a man with a huge warhammer standing side-by-side with a tall, strong bald man and a darkly handsome man with a massive, ornate two-handed sword; a young woman, red-haired and comatose, with a massive wolf standing before her with keen intelligence in its eyes; a brutish-looking young man’s head exploding as the Soviet woman shot him from under the chin with her pistol…  
  
Heydrich felt hands on him. _Scheiße_! He’d been distracted by the visions, and now…  
  
The Undying Ones had surrounded him, muttering dark words and reaching out to lay their hands on him, jaws opening wide…  
  
Heydrich pulled out his pistol, shot the two nearest in the heads, and shot the corrupted heart straight through the middle three times, causing it to collapse. The Undying Ones screamed, writhing in pain. Fire bloomed to life; a stray spark in some of the wine, perhaps? Heydrich neither knew nor cared. He sprinted from the room, down flight after flight of stairs, retracing his steps as shouts and screams of panic set in. He needed support, and fast.  
  
Finally, he burst out into the open, the House of the Undying burning behind him, and slowed to a jog, breathing easily despite the effort. It paid to stay in good physical shape. Before him, a squad of his _Schutzstaffel_ —and Pyat Pree.  
  
“What have you DONE?” screamed the stained-lipped toady. “You have killed them! Burned their House!” He drew a knife; Heydrich pulled his pistol back out and shot him in the face without slowing, and Pree collapsed, head half gone.  
  
“Sir! _Heil Heydrich!_ What happened?” That was a man in an _Obersturmführer_ ’s insignia, the commander of the men Heydrich had brought.  
  
“The Undying Ones are collaborators!” Heydrich snarled, adapting rapidly. “The ones who were loyal to our city were treacherously slain by those suborned by the Ibbenese degenerates! Get all of the Guard, move in and destroy everything you see as soon as the fires are out! We have unveiled a nest of vipers, one so bold as to even try to kill me! And we will not stand for it! _Sieg Heil!_ ”  
  
“ _Heil Heydrich_ , sir!” the _Obersturmführer_ replied with a stiff-armed salute. “You, go for reinforcements! The rest of you, protect the Captain!”  
  
“ _Heil Heydrich_!” the designated runner replied, and sprinted off.  
  
Reinhard Heydrich ran through the visions as he waited. Those had been too detailed and too eerily like reality to be fake. Most of them at the minimum were either memories…or warnings of what was to come.  
  
He would probably need to get started on an army.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah. Heydrich is a monster.
> 
> Daenerys here has come to a conclusion that canon Daenerys hasn’t yet; do NOT underestimate people of different cultures. Canon Daenerys is a cultural imperialist, who last attempted to understand a culture with the Dothraki, and even then didn’t get it enough to avoid screwing up. This version, with a live and reasonably controlled brother, a badass who’s mothering her and said brother because her own daughters are still in another dimension, and a second badass who’s leading Daenerys, Viserys, and a fuckload of Dothraki across the continent, has the time and general lack of responsibilities to sit down and think about things a little more. This should make her a much better ruler in the long run, and help her avoid really stupid mistakes like looking at other people's cultures as one-dimensional like she does in canon.
> 
> Viserys meanwhile gets a little help dealing with his issues, by providing something positive that he can focus on and work towards. Savic almost gets her ass beaten up for being overconfident—but then a hotheaded idiot who I almost forgot was hanging around decides to get his canonical death in really early and to a different person (in canon, Onzak was killed by Strong Belwas--and Goghor is one of Hizdahr's pit fighters, and alive as of the end of ADWD).


End file.
